British Broadcasting Corporation Gaza Film Considered a 'Major' Infringement of Media Standards, Says Broadcasting Watchdog
The BBC was found to have committed a "major breach" of broadcasting rules by failing to disclose that the narrator of a programme about the Gaza conflict was the child of a Hamas administrator, as ruled by regulatory body Ofcom.
An investigation by Ofcom into the documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone has concluded that the programme was "materially misleading".
The chief executive of the broadcaster had earlier expressed regret, stating there had been "a major oversight in relation to factual correctness".
The regulator has directed the corporation to broadcast a peak-time statement about its findings.
"As this represents a serious breach of our code, we are instructing the broadcaster to transmit a announcement of our determinations against it on BBC Two at nine o'clock in the evening, with a timing to be confirmed," it said.
'Possibility to Damage Confidence'
The regulator's report stated: "Our investigation found that the documentary's failure to disclose that the voice's parent held a role in the Hamas-administered authority was significantly deceptive.
"Consequently that the viewers did not have vital facts which may have been highly relevant to their evaluation of the voice and the information he shared.
"Credibility is at the heart of the bond between a television network and its public, particularly for a state-funded media outlet such as the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"This failing had the possibility to erode the very considerable amounts of credibility that the public would have put in a BBC factual programme about the conflict in Gaza."
The documentary was withdrawn from the BBC's streaming service in the month of February after the narrator's familial connections were revealed, and in this past July an broadcaster's internal assessment determined it infringed the organization's content policies on accuracy.
A BBC spokesperson commented: "The regulator's decision is in agreement with the findings of the internal assessment, that there was a serious error in the documentary in relation to the broadcaster's journalistic policies on accuracy, which corresponds to Rule 2.2 of Ofcom's Broadcasting Code.
"We issued an apology for this and we comply with the regulator's ruling in full. We will follow the sanction as soon as the timing and wording are confirmed."
